"A brilliant and lucid opening up of what an avatar is/could be,
told from the inside, from the body, from gesture -- which surely
is at the centre of human expressivity and creative unfolding.
I'm reminded of Deleuze's "we have only just begun to know what a
body is capable of" in the way Ventrella thinks what a virtual body
is/can be."
- Brian Rotman, author of
Becoming Beside Ourselves

"Given Jeffrey's groundbreaking work with avatars in virtual worlds,
I'd consider this mandatory reading for anyone interested in the
future of the medium."
- Wagner James Au, author of
The Making of Second Life

"Jeffrey has done something really hard to do: make a deep technical
treatise into a story; not just informative, but readable and fun"
- Brad deGraf,
3D Animation Pioneer

"It's very rare that designers of games and virtual worlds give us a glimpse
inside their design process. Jeffrey Ventrella, co-creator of the virtual
world There.com, has graced us with this lucid and practical account of
his experience creating expressive avatars, and developers of multiplayer
worlds would do well to build on his groundbreaking work. "Virtual Body
Language" is a must-read for both designers and researchers who wish to
gain a deeper understanding of the intense expressive relationship between
avatars and their users."
- Celia Pearce, author of
Communities of Play, MIT Press